Whethering

The rain is haunted;

I had forgotten.

My children are two hours abed

And yet I rise

Hearing behind the typing of the rain,

Its abacus and digits,

A voice calling me again,

Softer, clearer.

The kids lie buried under duvets, sound

Asleep. It isn’t them I hear, it’s

Something formless that fidgets

Beyond the window’s benighted mirror,

Where a negative develops, where reflection

Holds up a glass of spirits.

White noise

Precipitates.

Rain is a kind of recollection.

Much has been shed,

Hissing indignantly into the ground.

It is the listening

Belates,

Haunted by these fingertaps and sighs

Behind the beaded-curtain glistening,

As though by choices that we didn’t make and never wanted,

As though by the dead and misbegotten.